For more than two decades, Mark’s popular and compelling stories appeared in The New York Times, where he was ultimately the Lead Food Writer for the Sunday Magazine. He became the country’s first food-focused op-ed columnist for a major news publication.

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QUESTION(S) OF THE DAY: What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

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10 comments on “Mark Bittman on Changing the Food Industry and Living Dangerously”

Didn’t consume the material–just thought you might be interested in my unusual diet. For about eight years I’ve been living more than 90% on fluid milk products, cow milk and cow cream. So every day more than 90% of my diet is some kind of milk–skim, 1%, 2%, and/or whole–plus I buy pints of half-and-half (half milk and half cream) and drink them straight. I find it’s good for my physical and mental health and I tend to think it would be good for others. I should caution that no medical authority has validated this diet as safe or healthy for human beings. But I’ve seen tremendous benefits from it, and would think my body works similarly to many other people’s.

Cool Greg! Great to hear someone is doing their own thing too 🙂 I’m on my own version of liquid/ketogenic diet. I consume lots of coconut milk/cream/oil mixed with whole food based raw powders protein/greens/vitamins and minerals, some fish oil. Sometimes I eat solid food once in a week – 10 days. I function the best like that now. Although it might change. You never know. Plus I love my chocolate sometimes, 100% cacao 🙂

“There’s no success without failure.” – In life no one has a perfect recipe. And it’s almost impossible to get it right at the first attempt. In Russia we have a saying, “First pancake is always screwed up (or lumpy in Google translation)”, meaning when you attempt to do ANYTHING you haven’t done before, you’ll almost always screw up, so don’t be afraid of it, learn from it, keep going till your pancake is perfect. Or close to it.

Lesson absorbed from parents:
“Follow your passion thing.
You have to do what it is you think you wanna do. You are not gonna succeed at something you don’t want to do.” Obvious right? But so many of us do it anyway – trying to succeed at something we couldn’t care less about for one reason or the other.

“When you say yes to something, you say no to something else.” – That’s how you choose your life path. That’s free will in action. Choices.

“Don’t write things off too quickly.” – Real progress, the interesting stuff happens after “the hill”, when it sucks and you realize you have a lot to learn and lots of things to work on. But you love it, so you stick with it no matter how tough it gets, and the success “happens” – I never did that before, the stick with it thing. Learning the lesson of committed hard work now. Everyone who wants to make something cool in life got to learn it.

Loved it Tim! Thanks a lot! – It was an unexpected episode. I expected lots of talking about food, not about writing, and life, and fasting. Pleasant surprise!

Another great episode Tim, and don’t worry, we do understand you’re in the trenches with your book right now haha! My favorite part of this episode was when Mark explained how his old job of selling photo equipment gave him the courage to sell himself more aggressively, such great insight!

tim
My name is Alejandro, I’m 19 years old and I’m writing from Rosario, Argentina.
I’ve been following you for years and I want to thank you for Tool of titans, an incredible book.
From my humble opinion I think you do not know how many lives you have changed and from as far away as here.
I believe that for the first time I begin to understand the message you convey.
Testing the “impossible” made me reflect on my entire life, because I study and do what I do.
For some time my only goal in life was to make as much money as possible, as fast as possible, I saw nothing else.
Now I know I wanted to do it to challenge my own beliefs and break the status quo about the “impossible.”
Really that you read this message is for one of those “impossible” for which I want to start.

A big hug from Argentina.

PS: Sorry for my bad english
PS2: Please let this message arrive, it is very important for me.